A Selection of Shakespeares Sonnets

Sonnet 1
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
2. That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
3. But as the riper should by time decease,
4. His tender heir might bear his memory:
5. But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
6. Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial
fuel,
7. Making a famine where abundance lies,
8. Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
9. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
10. And only herald to the gaudy spring,
11. Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
12. And, tender churl, mak'st waste in
niggarding:
13. Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
14. To eat the world's due, by the grave and
thee.
Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the
ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Sonnet 29
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee--and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
2. Admit impediments. Love is not love
3. Which alters when it alteration finds,
4. Or bends with the remover to remove:
5. O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
6. That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
7. It is the star to every wandering bark,
8. Whose worth's unknown, although his height
be taken.
9. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and
cheeks
10. Within his bending sickle's compass come;
11. Love alters not with his brief hours and
weeks,
12. But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
13. If this be error and upon me proved,
14. I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Sonnet
154
The little love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire,
Which many legions of true hearts had warmed;
And so the general of hot desire
Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.
This brand she quenchd in a cool well by,
Which from love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove:
Love's fire heats water; water cools not love.